Putting the wild back into life
I ate my first wild blackberry Saturday (12 July), plucked from a bramble in Woodford that was overburdened with fruit!
I'm more used to them being ready in August/September and although my first blackberry of 2008 was a bit sour, it was plump and juicy and a day of warm sunshine would have set it to rights. It's another example of the changing seasons. Just another plant running ahead of schedule. Strangely, that evening as I sat in my Hackney garden watching the clouds zip past against a dark, stormy sky, it felt like the end of summer. I half expected the forty strong gang of swifts overhead to wave and shout "goodbye, we're back off to Africa before it gets too cold here."
Whether it's climate change or adaptation it's a reminder that nature is not static. Breeding, feeding and growing seasons all bend to its whims, but we still expect it to remain a constant in our busy lives.
Gardening and watching wildlife are two ways of staying in touch with the pace of the natural changes going on around us. I'm sure I feel better for being aware of, and therefore being part of, that natural change; the waxing and waning of seasons, the cycle of life that surrounds us.
So it was that I was saddened by a chat with a primary school teacher who says her class are really reluctant to touch soil. "They're worried they'll get dirty," she said. These same children apparently believe all meat is "chicken" and only know that their food comes from the supermarket or a take-away. These will be the same kids that aren't allowed out to play for fear of knife crime?
My partner has a theory that our childhood was as good as it gets and that since the seventies it's been downhill for children. It's a powerful argument. Generally, we were allowed to be free-range (within reason), we got grubby, played outdoors and ate food our parents cooked. Our parent's childhoods were not so great in the austere post-war years and their parent's childhoods were actually damn hard.
What's this got to do with birds and the RSPB? Well actually, quite a lot. We are all as much a part of the natural cycle as a magpie, and we've not been playing our part. A survey out last week claimed most children can't identify common UK wildlife such as a red admiral butterfly or even a woodlouse. How can we feel part of the natural cycle of the world if we can't even identify bits of it and are afraid of getting some soil under our fingernails? Go and get grubby. Plant some seeds or look under a log to see what alien lifeforms you can see.
London's wildlife needs you! Our Capital is a hot spot for threatened stag beetles, it contains rare orchids, growing numbers of finches reside here and increasing numbers of powerful birds of prey. When people talk of diverse London, they're probably not aware that more than two-hundred different species of birds share the same space as us. Common species like the house sparrow, starling and blackbird are declining and we're not sure why. It's depressing to think that soon, people won't even be able to identify these common garden birds to be able to do anything about it. Will anyone notice when they're gone?